Thief

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Mind breaker is pretty much the only one you need as far as this current content goes. Even with it's 2 second cooldown it gets you out of danger reliably and gives you more spirit back if you use it to dash through the target.

I'm baffled as to how all these builds ignore the sheer utility of Quick Step. This class can't exactly afford to miss out on ways to avoid death.

You are correct. Quick Step is mandatory in every build, if only just one point.

This is basically my final build after hours upon hours of raiding and testing.

This is hands down the best build for single-target DPS in this current CBT version of the game. I have no idea how much things will change once the game is released, so this information is completely useless, but this is definitely the best, with maybe a very small amount of wiggle room for somersault kick and vicious cuts.

Letting the poison tics go off instead of expending them on Surprise Attack is vastly superior. At best, I think Surprise Attack can be used for when you know a Boss is going to be unhittable. With max Cunning Tactics, you will have 100% uptime on Poison Edge stacks, allowing you to never use Double Slash and always use Vicious Cuts. Even without haste, your vicious cuts will do so much damage thanks to Ruthless.

Messing with that build briefly it's definitely on par (and actually a bit better cause less rng to worry about) with the others. I think at that point it'd be a matter of playstyle for the person on which build they would want to go with\

EDIT: Tinkered with both more and both are viable I would say. I personally prefer the haste build but the vicious cuts build works wonders too. Also you're right about letting your poison flow instead of using it on surprise attack... Was missing out on so much damage by trying to use surprise attack often instead of letting the poison sit...

The final build I'd go with for the (current) max haste build thanks to some of the info @SuperFunkWagon provided about surprise attack.
I'm missing 2 SP cause of some trophies but they'd go into poison vial if I had them

Check how much damage those 2 skills when they're at level 2 (min required for cuts) and higher levels.

I have them both at 9 now because I managed to get extra SP, but there is a huge difference, especially for Mind Breaker. If you actually look at the description, the MB skill adds 50% per point, and you'll notice how much more you do with it with more points. I use the skill as often as I can because I also have quick step to get me out of bad situations, so having MB on cooldown all the time isn't that bad for thieves.
Somersault Kick doesn't add as much with more points compared to MB, but still pretty significant.

The point of the build to have constant quick bursts of damage, which works well for when you need to move around a lot and chase, or bosses that require a lot of hit and run. You need to constantly pay attention to your cooldowns to make good use of it. I've tested the damage from using this build with constant rotations and compared it to just spamming max level Cuts/Edge and it does roughly 50% more damage. And this is on an immobile dummy, the gap would be even bigger on bosses that actually move and limit your opportunities.

Hahaha I finally managed to get an all thief Balrog going, it was tough because thief is so rare past Fire Dragon. This was our first clear after 3 tries. The first try was with only 2 people to test vial damage on adds, and the second was a test run with 3 people because we couldn't find a 4th, so we actually cleared with a full party on the first try. We did die a bunch but it's definitely doable with all thieves without losing all revives (or even deathless) with more practice just to let you all know. One of us had to go sleep because it was getting late so we couldn't try for better runs after the first time.

We killed adds with vials lol. Having 2 people dedicated to killing adds with vials was actually sufficient.

I apologize if it didn't belong here, but I didn't want to make a new thread for it, and I want to let the thieves that have a hard time getting a Balrog party know that an all thief party is definitely a thing.

Dark Descent example with Thief. I did this hours before the end of the beta.

I literally never see anyone talking in the forums about this dungeon, as well as the treasure dungeon. But with dark descent the point is to survive, not to kill quickly. Best advice is to not play aggressively. Don't try to face tank too much, and don't worry about taking longer to kill everything.

Good gear does matter, high defense will let you make more mistakes, but knowing the mechanics of each stage is the most important. You can still die very quickly if you don't know how to handle some stage (like I did on stage 18).

Edit: this is outdated, Dark Descent got hella buffed. Just throw vials and play chicken until you get 1-shot in stage 5.

With the current level cap at 60, this is my skill build with all possible skill points via Trophies/Levels.
This build seems to give me the most bang for my buck.
Some people in my guild say they only struggle with it because its hard to maintain the rotation.
But once you learn to maintain it, you can have a consistent amount of dps and be vital to the party.
I plan on testing out ways to possibly incorporate Deft combatant, but i already feel it wont output as much damage until level cap is raised again.

With the current level cap at 60, this is my skill build with all possible skill points via Trophies/Levels.
This build seems to give me the most bang for my buck.
Some people in my guild say they only struggle with it because its hard to maintain the rotation.
But once you learn to maintain it, you can have a consistent amount of dps and be vital to the party.
I plan on testing out ways to possibly incorporate Deft combatant, but i already feel it wont output as much damage until level cap is raised again.

Do you mind explaining your rotation? I'm honestly at a loss at what to do.

Example, right now I'm leveling with the poison build (because spamming blade dance nonstop was rather boring, and I needed the interplay between poisons, cunning, and surprise attack). Should I use surprise attack on cd, even with only one poison or no cunning? Should I only use surprise attack with cunning up and two poisons?

Or is it with vicious cuts and doing something like Poison Vile > Cunning with Edge > Vicious Cuts until SP is empty > Double Cut, with Cunning used on Edge then Surprise Attacks?